Del Mar’s season ends today

Ralph Siraco

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 1998 | 10:40 a.m.

The summer racing season will officially end today with the closing of Del Mar. Traditionally, the Labor Day weekend wraps up the summer sessions for racing around the country and Monday signaled the end of the Saratoga meet, Monmouth Park in New Jersey and Ellis Park in Kentucky.

The 43-day meet where the turf meets the surf has a 10-race finale with the seaside trainer's title still in a three-way mathematical scramble. Going into today's curtain-dropping program, Bob Baffert leads Barry Abrams by two wins at 16-14.

Baffert has entered four runners while Abrams sends five entrants in quest of a last-day rally for the trainer's title. Bob Hess Jr. has four chances to catch the top two and sits third in the standings with 13 victories. Hess would have to win all four races today with Baffert blanking and Abrams held to a pair of wins to take the Del Mar training championship.

By contrast, the Del Mar jockey championship is safely locked away in Corey Nakatani's trophy case. He has scored on the average of one winner a day during the meet and going into today's card needs just a single victory to maintain that pace for the entire season. Sitting in second place is Alex Solis with 31 wins, 11 victories short of Nakatani, but holds only a pair of wins ahead of third place Chris McCarron.

Although Solis and McCarron share the same agent in Scotty McLellar, they will take their private run for the Avis spot to the last day's competition. Gary Stevens, who was leading the pack until a freak pre-race injury on Aug. 23 that sidelined him, sits in fourth place with 28 victories. Stevens wrenched his left knee while warming up his mount that resulted in a torn radial meniscus. He used the situation to undergo a second surgery to repair cartilage in his right knee and will take a simultaneous recovery period that should have Stevens back in the saddle by late September.

Jockey Mike Smith experienced a similar fate at Saratoga this year. He was leading the upstate New York jockey colony and enjoyed his brightest moment of the Spa meet with a victory on Coronado's Quest in the Aug. 29 Travers Stakes when two days later he was involved in a scary spine-tingling spill. Smith was catapulted to the turf and suffered back injuries that will sideline him for the rest of the year. The rider had amassed 30 wins with just six days left to the season.

It took a triple by jockey John Velasquez on the closing day's Labor Day card to take the title away from the sidelined leader. Velasquez captured his first title of any kind since arriving in this country from his native Puerto Rico by just one victory to end the meet with 31. Ironically, Velasquez' agent, Angel Cordero Jr., won 14 riding titles at Saratoga during his famed riding career.

Continuing the upward trend in racing, Saratoga recorded across-the-board gains in attendance and handle for the 36-day meeting. Attendance was up 7.4 percent while the daily average handle climbed 5.6 percent to $2.9 million.

Todd Pletcher captured the Spa training title with 20 winners to give the conditioner his first Saratoga trophy.